Cerebral Atrophy

They came in a pack of four. The wolves from the Justice Department descended on my father once the disease became too advanced to conceal. Sometimes he recognized them for the enemy they were but there were instances when he thought they were old acquaintances and he wanted to reminisce about incidents that they had no prior knowledge of. I did my best to keep the predators away but they snuck in disguised as doctors, deliverymen and caretakers.

They came in a pack of four. The extended members of the family pretended to visit but really wanted to assess the situation personally. They insisted on holding their “visits” where they could whisper so low that my father had no idea what they were saying. They looked at each other more than they looked at him and some, I am sure, had never met him before though they all insinuated otherwise.

They came in a pack of four. The batteries arrived in the mail accompanied by a handful of wires in an unmarked envelope as a warning of things to come. My hands shook and everything spilled to the floor. The meaning was that the guests from out of town were more worried about the local boys than they let on. If you’re lucky, you get one warning.

They came in a pack of four. The sleeping pills with all the warnings, side effects, and harmful drug interactions were in individualized boxes but there was no shortage of them.  I made sure my father’s prints were on every box, every label, and every piece of inner wrap. I put all of them in his mouth – four at a time – and forced him to drink them down. I held his hands and watched him leave.

by Michael Gunn

 

Michael Gunn has been previously published in Shotgun Honey.

Pigs

After I dropped out of university I spent some time working on my uncle’s farm. My uncle was called Frank and wasn’t much to look at, the whiskey had done that to him, whiskey and heartache. He was getting on now so I chopped wood for the fire and made dinner as best as I could. In the evenings I lost myself in Tolstoy.

My uncle got me into butchery. The first thirteen pigs I killed I named. The last thirteen I resorted to using numbers. Perhaps I was feeling more human.

The one person I killed, in an accident, her name I have long since forgotten.

I remember the date it happened though, that’s something.

When the summer was over I started back for the city and found myself in a diner with a woman I did not know. I told her that I loved her right there and then and knew from the moment I set eyes upon her that we were to be married. She was called Mercy and she thought what I said and did was very strange but that she would leave it go this time because I had a tired face and when men are tired they do foolish things.

Frank died a little while after that and the pigs cannibalised each other before the last one finally starved to death. I don’t know if she had a name or a number.

I married Mercy but she left me after a few years and married another pig farmer because he was heartbroken and she felt pity for him. I told her as she was leaving that she had too much faith in the word and she said she knew this to be true.

 

by Roy Endean

Roy Endean lives in the south of Ireland. His work has appeared in Brand Magazine, The Steel Toe Review and Corium, and has been performed by The Accidental Theatre Company. He is the recent recipient of the Burbage New Writing Prize.

Rains Came Too Late

The fire gnawed the grasslands to bone-cracked earth on the way to our village. We hoped the lake would save us, the buckets of life we hauled from the shore, the trenches of dirt we overturned, the drenched rooftops.

We saw it writhing across the plane, rivers of light beneath rainless billows, bound for our storehouses, our livestock, our children. We beat at embers, singed our skirts, lost our hats in the breach. We unmoored our fishing boats and cast ourselves on the mercy of the inflammable.

The lake became a cloistered room of steam and sodden embers, roof of smoke, wringing the breath from our throats. We drenched aprons and handkerchiefs, tied them round our sons and daughters, round their ash-flecked faces.

When our rowboats scrape the shore, the ground is still hot, patched with guttering flames. The soles of our boots melt. The stones by the lake are blackened and cracked, and the cattle have vanished to ash. The evening is yellow and gray with smoldering.

We remember the purple flowers that flourished by the water, the grass that tumbled toward the shore. We remember the woods across the lake, its mosses and mushrooms, its birds’ nests, its deer.

We remember that the fish are still in the lake, and the boats are in the lake, and our sons and daughters lie sleeping in the boats.

 

by Brianne Holmes

Brianne Holmes lives and writes in Greenville, NC. Her work has appeared in the Ivy Leaves Journal of Literature and Art, in which she was also named the featured writer in 2012. She has a piece forthcoming in the Journal of Microliterature. Currently, she serves as an editorial assistant for the North Carolina Literary Review.

What You Do In the Dark

He had only caught you a few times, sneaking up from behind, each step as stealth as a tiptoeing cat, shattering the silence with a WHAT ARE YOU DOING that booms in your brain but, in reality, is barely above what school teachers call your “inside voice.”

You do not answer and he does not need you to answer because he saw. On the edge of the bed—your side of the bed, not his, you remind him—you are hunched over, your back curved like a crescent moon or maybe a crescent roll with your feet dangling a foot above the floor, clipping your toe nails not into the trashcan, like he asks, but onto the carpet where your feet, not his, you remind him, step each morning and each night.

It’s what you do in the dark, you tell him.

The lights are all on, he says.

I can bring you a trashcan, he says.

That’s not the point but you let him anyway. You feign laziness. When he leaves, you return to clipping your nails over the carpet until they align perfectly with the edge of your fingertips. When you are done, you look down at the chipped nail polish-adorned toenail clippings—sharp confetti. Spreading them evenly across the carpet before you, your toes run through the razor sharp blades that will disappear when you vacuum on Sundays, only to be replaced by a fresh brood days later—virgins filed in millimeter-sized rows across your toes, steadily progressing towards execution.

 

by Melissa Darcey

Melissa Darcey is a writer based in San Diego, CA. She has a soft spot for Jane Eyre, coffee, and her orange cat, Milo. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, Gravel, Extract(s), Litro, Black Heart, Cease, Cows, and elsewhere.

The Quiltmaker

It took her years, but she made a memory quilt the size of their home. At first, she used her husband’s worn work clothes. Some time passed and she cut, nipped, and threaded a fine needle through her children’s clothes, too. Her husband took to calling her fanatical; saying she no longer honored his wishes. The children grew and fell away like autumn leaves. Then the cancer stuck for good. She rolled her yellow eyes, lit her Marijuana cigarette, and touched him gently as she’d once done. Her life was coming to a close, she knew. Like flash cards in youth, quicker by the day. Now her children and husband gathered by her bedside; said their last goodbyes. They loved her dearly, but none knew what to do with her old clothes. They only wanted their fair share. But she hadn’t divided them; that they had done on their own.

 

by Bill Cook

Bill Cook lives in a semi-rural area in Southern California’s High Desert, and has stories published in Juked, elimae, Thieves Jargon, Tin Postcard Review, Right Hand Pointing, The Summerset Review, SmokeLong Quarterly and in Dzanc’s anthology Best of the Web 2009.

Bukowski

We lay in bed and smoked cigarettes. She wasn’t allowed to smoke in her apartment, but figured she’d find a way to cover the smell when the time came to move out. The future never concerned her much. Untouchable, unknowable things never did. Her naked leg rested on my stomach as we talked about the past, about music, about films. We both vowed to re-watch Twin Peaks, this time with each other. I worried that I’d never make it as a writer. We discussed this while listening to something like goth music, something she liked and wanted me to like too.

She said, “Hush. Don’t talk that way. Bukowski didn’t publish his first book until he was fifty-one.”

I said, “But Bukowski wasn’t serious literature. Philip Roth won the National Book Award at twenty-seven.”

She laughed and blew smoke in my face and said, “You can’t break out of prison and into society the same week.”

“What?” I said.

“John Wayne,” she said. “It’s from a John Wayne movie.”

“You don’t seem like the type.”

“I wasn’t born with black eyeliner and lace. Besides, Bukowski is twice the writer you are.”

I shut up and we made love. Later, she apologized about the Bukowski remark.

 

by Jason Christian

 

Jason Christian traveled for more than a decade, first with a carnival, and later in search of adventure. He is currently studying creative writing at Oklahoma State University and plans to pursue an MFA after that. He has published in This Land Press, Mask Magazine, Liquid Journal, and has a story forthcoming in Oklahoma Review.

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